Tests and Examinations

News about tests and examinations, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

Chronology of Coverage

Mar. 2, 2015

New standardized educational tests meant to assess progress under Common Core standards have encountered an unusually broad opposition coalition, with parents in New Jersey and several other states pushing their children to opt out; opponents include diverse set of parents, teachers' unions and those who negatively associate new standards with Pres Obama. MORE

Feb. 17, 2015

Feb. 7, 2015

Op-Ed article by education specialist Chad Alderman holds that rollback of No Child Left Behind law would be damaging to nation's students; contends while some find frequent testing burdensome, it allows for close monitoring of student progress and more nuanced view of student performance; asserts that strongest argument for keeping No Child Left Behind is that it is working. MORE

Jan. 28, 2015

Arizona is first state to enact law which requires high school students to pass citizenship exam to graduate; critics say test takes away from valuable instruction time and simply requires memorization to pass, whereas teaching civics supports critical thinking and student engagement; other states are considering similar bill. MORE

Jan. 27, 2015

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announces that city schools will close ahead of snowstorm, giving some students a reprieve from pending Regents exams. MORE

Jan. 13, 2015

Education Sec Arne Duncan discusses Obama administration's priorities for revising No Child Left Behind law; says annual testing for students is important. MORE

Jan. 4, 2015

Thousands of students from around the secluded town of Maotanchang in China's eastern Anhui province attend its high school to prepare for annual national college-entrance examination known as gaokao; Maotanchang is unique in that its sole industry is cram schools, where students study for gaokao 16 hours a day, seven days a week; gaokao has come under fire pressure it puts on students, as it is sole criterion on which college admission is based. MORE

Dec. 28, 2014

Op-Ed article by Prof David L Kirp contends that backlash against Common Core standards occurring across United States is being driven by Obama administration's over-emphasis on accountability and standardized testing; holds that emphasis has reinforced mistaken belief that testing is equivalent to Common Core and suggests it will take tremendous effort to get standards back on track. MORE

Dec. 16, 2014

Op-Ed article by Dr Danielle Ofri holds decennial recertification process is bloated, costing doctors an inordinate amount of time and money that exacts toll on their practice; cites research finding that recertification does not produce better medical outcomes for patients; calls for simplified process that focuses on relevant updates to medical knowledge and uses open-book method. MORE

Dec. 9, 2014

Small number of students at Columbia Law School have been granted postponements of their final exams; allowances follow decision by Columbia to allow a delay for any students feeling undermined and disheartened by grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers in deaths of unarmed black men in New York City and Ferguson, Mo. MORE

Nov. 23, 2014

News analysis; research supports those parents and teachers protesting standardized testing increasingly common in schools across nation; experiments show that giving students tests of varying length and intensity, going beyond just basic assessment, can deepen learning experience and create more deeply embedded memories of subject matter. MORE

Nov. 20, 2014

New York State officials announce roughly 20 percent drop in the number of candidates who passed teacher certification tests in the 2013-14 school year; drop-off reflects tougher exams, with officials portraying result as a long-needed move to raise the level of teaching and the performance of teacher preparation schools. MORE

Nov. 10, 2014

Parents and educators across Florida have joined national protest against consequences of Common Core testing; furor in Florida is particularly striking for state that was pioneer in school accountability. MORE

Nov. 2, 2014

Taking good lecture notes in college helps improve test performance; marketplace of class notes up for sale on sites like Flashnotes.com have started up on five campuses, and many professors have barred their students from buying or selling notes. MORE

Nov. 2, 2014

Sampling of how Advanced Placement studio art programs evaluate and score high school students' portfolios are discussed. MORE

Oct. 21, 2014

New York State Board of Regents gives initial approval to a major change to high school graduation requirements, allowing students to earn their diplomas with one fewer test if they pass another assessment in a variety of alternative subjects, including 13 vocational assessments. MORE

Oct. 7, 2014

Kenneth Chang STEM column discusses mathematics part of Common Core academic standards, specifying math skills that should be mastered in kindergarten through high school. MORE

Oct. 6, 2014

Getting a good grade doesn’t mean you retained the information. In his book, Benedict Carey offers better ways than cramming for you to hold on to knowledge. MORE

Sep. 30, 2014

Criminal trial begins for 12 public school educators in Atlanta accused of conspiring to change student's test scores in effort to protect their jobs and win favor and bonuses from administrators begins; all have pleaded not guilty. MORE

Sep. 7, 2014

Education community has been excited by studies that have found that testing students at the beginning of courses helps students' performances improve; basic insight is that pretesting may be the key to studying, rather than the other way around. MORE

Sep. 2, 2014

Op-Ed article by historian James R Grossman disputes criticism of College Board's revision of history curriculum for Advanced Placement tests; holds students need an unvarnished picture of our nation's past and the skills to understand and interpret that picture; says historians and educators who worked on new history framework are right to emphasize historical thinking as essential aspect of civic culture. MORE

Aug. 27, 2014

Group of alumni from eight prestigious New York City public high schools issues statement in support of keeping test as sole criterion for entry, inserting themselves in long-running debate over admissions process and its impact on schools’ racial makeup; legislators and civil rights groups have blamed test-only policy for fact that very few black and Hispanic students are admitted to eight so-called specialized high schools, in comparison with their numbers in city’s school system over all. MORE

Aug. 22, 2014

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says states may delay use of test results in teacher-performance ratings for another year, in effect acknowledging enormous pressures mounting on nation’s teachers due to new academic standards and more rigorous standardized testing. MORE

Aug. 19, 2014

Fight over future of academic standards in Louisiana has generated lawsuits between Gov Bobby Jindal and John White, state superintendent of education, as well as a sense of chaos among educators and parents; Jindal has become outspoken detractor of Common Core academic standards that he ardently supported when state originally adopted them in 2010, along with more than 40 other states. MORE

Aug. 15, 2014

New York State Education Department releases results that show percentage of elementary- and middle-school students passing statewide math exams inched up in 2014 while reading scores remained flat; this is second year that state administered exams aligned with Common Core standards. MORE

Aug. 11, 2014

Jury selection is set to begin for 12 former Atlanta Public Schools employees accused of conspiring to alter and boost students' standardized test scores; scandal in Atlanta is one of a number that have surfaced around the country, as standardized testing has become more central to the effort of identifying weaknesses in public schools and in distributing merit pay to teachers. MORE

Aug. 5, 2014

Educators in North Carolina are questioning whether new summer classes will help third-grade students meet literacy rules that could force them to stay back a year in school; about 1,500 of the 1,900 students in Charlotte who failed standardized reading test given to all third-graders in the spring enrolled in literacy school in June; some critics argue that efforts need to begin much earlier in a child's life. MORE

Jul. 20, 2014

Gray Matter column by psychology Prof Henry L Roediger III describes his research on test-taking; contends way schools think about testings needs to be changed, and that testing should be means by which students progress, rather than a white-knuckle finale for semester's worth of work. MORE

Jul. 9, 2014

Kansas State Board of Education announces that state will not issue any report cards for 2014 on how its public school students performed on standardized reading and math tests after series of cyberattacks; federal Education Department must sign off on decision. MORE

Jun. 23, 2014

Op-Ed article by Richard D Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, questions fairness of system governing admission to New York City's elite public high schools; notes that only 5 percent of seats were offered to black students and 7 percent to Latinos; disputes policy of basing admissions entirely on results of Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, and calls for broadening of selection criteria, offering system used by Chicago's public schools as model. MORE

Jun. 15, 2014

Chrispin Alcindor, Brooklyn fourth grader who was once top student, has struggled to adapt to rigorous new academic standards known as Common Core and experienced anxiety about exams that accompany them; whether Common Core achieves its promise will ultimately depend on schools and children like Chrispin, and whether they are able to rise to rigor of new demands. MORE

Jun. 11, 2014

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of country’s largest donors to educational causes and strong backer of academic guidelines known as Common Core, calls for two-year moratorium on states or school districts making any high-stakes decisions based on test results aligned with Common Core curriculums; foundation official expresses belief that teachers across nation need more time for a comfortable and effective transition to the standards. MORE

Jun. 10, 2014

Bills now being introduced in Albany to change what critics argue is a discriminatory admissions policy at New York City's most selective high schools are receiving only tepid political support; bills would allow the schools to use multiple measures to decide whom to admit, rather than the single criterion, a test two and a half hours long, that they now must rely on. MORE

May. 27, 2014

Unlikely coalitions of teachers, lawmakers and parents from the left and right are banding together to fight what they see as onerous changes in education policy; tensions are running high over issues around academic benchmarks, standardized testing and performance evaluations for educators. MORE

May. 8, 2014

Results of National Assessment of Educational Progress exams show that high school seniors in Connecticut performed better on math and reading tests, but New Jersey and most of nation remained flat in both areas; New York was not one of 13 states that volunteered to report results for test, which was given to 92,000 of nation's estimated 3.2 million seniors between January and March 2013. MORE

May. 7, 2014

Jim Dwyer About New York column; New York State order prevents teachers and principals from disclosing the contents of three days of standardized English tests given in April, though 37 principals from schools in Manhattan, as well as others from Brooklyn, have sounded the alarm about the design and quality of the tests. MORE

May. 6, 2014

Increasing number of high schools are pushing to expand reach and success of Advanced Placement classes, seeking to draw both average and above average students, as part of collaboration with the National Math and Science Initiative; NMSI, nonprofit organization founded in 2007 to help improve science education, combines teacher training with student study sessions and cash incentives to reach its goals. MORE

May. 1, 2014

Test preparation in New York City public schools, and anxiety it causes both teachers and students, is as robust as ever despite promises by New York City’s schools chancellor Carmen Farina; she had said she would limit state exams’ role in measuring student progress, but decade of accountability-based reforms has so deeply changed classroom it will take long time for her message to have any effect. MORE

Apr. 21, 2014

Letter signed by dance teachers at La Guardia High School of Music and Performing Arts to New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina accuses La Guardia's principal of basing admissions on academic records and test scores ahead of talent; letter contends that principal, Dr Lisa Mars, rejected 43 out of 92 students the dance faculty had recommended, an unusually high ratio. MORE

Apr. 10, 2014

New York City's Education Department, in break with data-driven policies of former Mayor Michael R Bloomberg, moves to reduce role of standardized exams in deciding which students to hold back each year; under new policy, test scores will still be used in decisions, but they will not be dominant factor. MORE

Apr. 10, 2014

Op-Ed article by public school principal Elizabeth Phillips decries gag order imposed on teachers by testing company Pearson's $32 million contract with New York State; says contract prohibits state from making test public and prevents teachers from pointing out numerous problems; contends that tests are confusing, developmentally inappropriate and not aligned to the Common Core; calls for greater transparency in hopes of raising public awareness and improving tests. MORE

Apr. 4, 2014

Many New York students say they were better able to handle material on 2014 state reading tests; passing rates plummeted in 2013 when the state changed its test to match curriculum standards known as the Common Core, leading to complaints that tests were too difficult and had been introduced before students and teachers had fully adapted to new learning goals. MORE

Apr. 2, 2014

Results from Program for International Student Assessment, international standardized tests, reveal that 15-year-olds in the United States scored above average of those in the developed world on exams assessing problem-solving skills; US students trail several countries in Asia and Europe as well as Canada. MORE

Mar. 30, 2014

Ginia Bellafante Big City column notes growing movement among New York City parents and educators to protest Common Core, set of standards and tests intended to determine whether child is being properly prepared for college; many students are refusing to take tests as part of protest movement; says more significant aspect of dissent is its expansion beyond white and affluent students and their families. MORE

Mar. 12, 2014

Racial demographics for incoming students at eight of New York City’s nine specialized schools, where black and Hispanic students have long been underrepresented, have remained stagnant; data prompts Mayor Bill de Blasio to call again for increasing diversity at the schools; eight schools have a single-test admittance policy that critics have called racially discriminatory. MORE

Jan. 29, 2014

Defense Department officials say that 30 more Air Force members had cheated on tests of their knowledge of how to launch nuclear missiles, doubling number caught up in scandal. MORE

Jan. 26, 2014

Catherine Rampell It's The Economy column notes many employers, cautious about who they hire, are adopting work-force analytics software and video games to identify the most promising job candidates; says while these practices are efficient, they may not exactly measure the skills that employers want them to measure. MORE

Jan. 24, 2014

Three-year test cheating scandal at schools in Philadelphia district results in three principals being fired and other educators either retired, resigned, laid off or awaiting disciplinary action; test cheating is one of largest such scandals in country, and role of standardized tests is again being questioned. MORE

Jan. 23, 2014

Philadelphia school district says three public school principals have been fired after investigation into test cheating that implicated about 140 teachers and administrators. MORE

Jan. 7, 2014

Guilty pleas in Atlanta schools' test scandal increases to 17 educators, with several more in active negotiations; focus is shifting to former schools superintendent Beverly Hall, who is being portrayed as mastermind of scheme that led to charges against 35 educators accused of manipulating test scores. MORE

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